May Day!
It’s the first of the merry month, the month in which my darling girl was born, in which I was married… the month of the darling buds of… May!
I’ve been busy with my buds a lot lately, and this month is bursting with beautiful occasions to be with those I love and together marvel at and revel in the ephemeral splendour of this (my favourite) month of the year. We are like the éphémères (Mayflies) in our frenetic carpe diems, gathering here, gathering there.
I want to write about Beltane, about maypoles, about H.E. Bates and the Larkins, about muguet (lily-of-the-valley), but I’ve made a vow to myself to fix my sleep this month, to get to bed early and to quit the screen at least an hour before my head hits the pillow. Last month’s sartorial challenge was a success, but as Lu pointed out, it was relatively fun. This sleep thing is going to require some amount of sacrifice.
The first hurdle: I’m lacking time to write, now, as I spent the day working with a friend and am soon going to take another friend out for his birthday dinner. Normally I might just do the writing later, no matter how late that might be, but that’s a big no-no from a sleep hygienist’s perspective. So: let me turn over the reins to another pair of darling buds: Patti Smith and Allen Ginsberg. You can listen to her reading of his poem - it’s quite moving - here: https://pattismith.substack.com/p/may-poem
MAY POEM
by Allen Ginsberg
Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing - beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars,
chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind - but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell -
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or
Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains - Otsego County
farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana -
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street -
Where does it come from, where does it go forever? .
